The auction for Riordan, Lewis & Haden‘s portfolio company, Avella Specialty Pharmacy, was well under way back in February, according to industry sources. UnitedHealth Group‘s (NYSE: UNH) Optum was reported to be in the lead, and then things went dark. It wasn’t until UnitedHealth Group’s third quarter earnings report was published on October 16 that […]

Cigna (NYSE: CI) is buying Express Scripts Holdings (NYSE: ESRX) for $67 billion, including debt. Some company was going to buy it, we just weren’t sure who. The deal follows the announcement of the $77 billion CVS Health/Aetna (NYSE: CVS/AET) deal and the $4.9 billion Optum/DaVita Medical Group (NYSE: UNH/DVA) hook-up in December 2017. That’s when the […]

Health care companies are still attracting buyers, and those in the services sectors seem to be the hottest. Last month saw healthy deal volume, at 134 transactions. For a year that started slowly for health care mergers and acquisitions, March 2016’s deal volume is only 3% lower than the same month a year ago. Industry […]

UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) is still in acquisition mode. Two weeks ago its OptumRx subsidiary announced a $1.0 billion deal for pharmacy benefits manager Catamaran Corp. (NASDAQ: CTRX). Last week, another subsidiary, Optum, reached a deal for MedExpress, a privately held chain of full-service neighborhood medical centers in 11 states. Financial terms were not disclosed, […]

As the free-standing pharmacy care business of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), OptumRx has serious backing when the right target comes along. Last week, the right one came along in the form of Catamaran Corporation (NASDAQ: CTRX), the nation’s fourth-largest provider of pharmacy benefit management services and healthcare information technology solutions. The offer was $61.50 per […]

After a fairly quiet 2014, M&A in the pharmacy benefit management (PBM) segment saw two big deals go down in February. First, Rite Aid Corp. (NYSE: RAD) paid $2 billion for EnvisionRx, a portfolio company of TPG. Last week, Catamaran Corp. (NASDAQ: CTRX) added to its own portfolio with an all-cash, $405 million deal for […]